


trials of the past

by alcibiades



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Cognitive Dissonance, Dissociation, First Time, Hospitals, M/M, Museums, Nightmares, Pain, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:37:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5783956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky tried to say Steve's name, but all he could say was, "I feel like I know the artist," and Steve wasn't paying attention. He was tapping the brush against his mouth, looking forward at the painting. The liquid rose, around his ankles, his thighs, his chest. It wasn't cold; it was hot.</p><p>Eventually Steve looked back at Bucky again. He just looked sad, now. Disappointed, maybe. The red liquid lapped around his chin. "If you're not having a good time," he said, his voice muffled and distorted as the paint crept into his mouth, "we can leave."</p>
            </blockquote>





	trials of the past

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [the song by SBTRKT.](https://youtu.be/h58OAXYyleA) Thank you to [Stasia](http://Aisatsana441.tumblr.com) for her gracious and meticulous efforts in beta-reading for me.

"Jesus _fucking_ christ," said Bucky, turning off the tv, tossing the remote aside.

"Language," Steve said from beside him; he had that absent tone that meant he wasn't really paying attention, and -- _language_? That had been a joke he hadn't heard Steve use since -- he turned to look, and Steve was holding his book right up to his face, not more than five or six inches away, frowning and squinting. And he was --

"What the fuck," said Bucky. He had stood up before he really noticed he was doing it, and Steve looked up at him in confusion. A familiar look, an expression Bucky knew well, the downturned curve of Steve's mouth and the way he looked up through his eyelashes. A familiar look on a familiar face, on -- a familiar --

"What?" said Steve. He put his book aside, and Bucky watched him. He had big hands, as thin as they were -- long, elegant fingers, and the smallest wrists Bucky had ever seen, the bones showing through the skin. Bucky had had a lot of practice watching those hands. He'd know them anywhere, except -- he hadn't seen them since --

"What happened to you?" Bucky said. "What -- what happened to you?"

"Bucky?" said Steve. "Come on, I don't get it. What's that supposed to mean this time?"

Bucky stared down at him, and eventually Steve got up too and came over to Bucky's side of the couch, folding his arms across his chest and tilting his chin up to look Bucky in the eye. "I know this is your line," he said to Bucky, "but are you feeling okay?"

Bucky couldn't find an answer, and eventually Steve's expression clouded. "I really wouldn't have expected this from you," he said, grabbing his book from the table and sitting back down with it. "Of all people."

"Shit," said Bucky, immediately shocked into action. "No, Steve, I'm -- that's not what I meant, you know that. Just -- do you know where we are right now?"

Steve looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "In our apartment," he said, and then smirked a little. "My apartment. In Avengers Tower. New York City. America. Planet Earth. Do you want me to keep going?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "I mean, no, that's all right." He ran a hand through his hair. "Just, you know you're. You're smaller, right?"

" _Come on,_ " said Steve. "Of course I know I'm small. What are you trying to get at here?"

"I --" said Bucky, hopelessly lost. "What about the serum? You remember the serum, right, and Dr. Erskine, and --"

Steve closed his book and stood up again. "Seriously, Bucky," he said. He reached up and laid the back of his hand against Bucky's forehead. His skin was cool; he had always been cool _before_ , as opposed to now, when he ran constantly hotter than average. "Are you feeling okay?"

Bucky stared down at him. He was so familiar, the slenderness of his arms and the blue veins that came very close to the surface in his elbows, the wiry muscle of his biceps, and his big, knobby knuckles. It was so familiar to look down at him like this. But it didn't make sense. Even his clothes fit; the white t-shirt and jeans didn't hang off him like they would have if he'd _changed_.

"You don't feel hot," said Steve.

"I'm fine," said Bucky. "I'm fine, I'm okay. Sorry, sorry."

Steve raised an eyebrow at him. "Really, I'm fine," Bucky said. "I'm gonna go down to the pool and swim a few laps, okay? I'll be back in a little while."

"All right, Buck," said Steve, sitting back down once more with an air of finality. "Whatever you say."

Bucky went into his bedroom to grab his swim trunks, and as he passed by Steve's room, he looked inside, trying for any kind of clue he could suss out. There was nothing, though; it looked completely normal, exactly the same. A neatly-made bed, with Steve's sweats sitting folded on top of it. His shoes, over by the closet door.

He could hardly look at Steve as he went out the front door, and as soon as he had left, he stood there in the middle of the hallway, just frozen. Totally unable to move. What the fuck was he going to do? He couldn't let Steve go out there like that; Steve was going to get killed. It wasn't that he was delicate, or flimsy -- he was a hell of a lot stronger than most people probably realized, but it didn't matter. He'd get ripped to shreds.

And -- what the fuck had happened? One minute he'd been sitting next to Steve, six foot two and built like a brick wall of muscle, and the next he'd looked over and -- had he imagined all of this? Was he imagining it? Was this some kind of trick, maybe a delayed suggestion Hydra had implanted to threaten his relationship with Steve, if it came to that? Was he just losing his mind? Had they designed him to just _go bad_ eventually, without routine maintenance?

"Fuck," he said, digging the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket. Tony, he'd call Tony. If anybody could figure this out, it'd be him. He tapped Tony's name, held the phone up against his ear, and closed his eyes, listening to it ring. There was that telltale pause when somebody picked up, and he heard Tony inhale and say --

\-- He opened his eyes. He was in bed. The room was pitch black except for the ambient street light drifting in through the window. He reached for his phone and looked at it; three forty-eight in the morning.

He got out of bed and walked down the hall. Steve's door was closed, because of course it was, because Steve was asleep. He reached for the doorknob instinctively and then paused, hesitating. But he had to know; he turned the knob slowly, opening the door silently.

It was dark in Steve's room, too. He could faintly see where Steve was tangled up in his covers, the lines of the comforter picked out by the cool light from the windows. He stepped forward into the doorway, and Steve stirred, waking immediately, sitting up on his elbows. He didn't have a shirt on, and Bucky could see very clearly the thickness of his forearms, the bulge of his biceps. "Bucky?" he said, reaching up to rub sleep out of his eyes.

"Yeah," said Bucky. "I'm sorry."

“It's okay," Steve said. “What’s going on?"

"Nothing," said Bucky. "Nothing, I'm fine, go back to sleep."

He couldn't quite read Steve's expression in the dark, but he would have put it at somewhere near "quizzical." Steve lay back down after a second, and Bucky backed out of the doorway slowly and pulled the door shut after himself. He didn't go back to bed, though. He knew he was too unsettled to sleep. Instead he went out into the living room and sat down facing the windows. He watched the lights flicker and the sky change, shading to deep blue, and then purple, and finally the soft peach-pink of dawn.

+++

"Hey," said Steve the next morning, emerging from the bathroom freshly showered, toweling off his hair as he came into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. "This is a weird question, but did you wake me up at like -- I don't know, four in the morning last night?"

"It's not a weird question," said Bucky. "I did."

"How come?" said Steve, peering into the fridge.

"You ever have one of those dreams that feels so real, when you wake up you're not sure if it actually happened or not?" said Bucky.

"Yeah, I've had those," Steve said. "What was it about?" He got out the carton of eggs, reaching for the skillet, and Bucky handed it over to him; he was closer.

"I don't know," Bucky said. "Weird stuff that doesn't make sense when you think about it for a second."

Steve laughed, turning the stove's burner on and cracking an egg into the pan. "I get those sometimes. I don't remember mine very often, though. Do you want eggs?"

"Sure," said Bucky. "Thanks." He thought about adding something to that -- something about how it wasn't so much a blessing as a curse, or that he wished he didn't remember his dreams so clearly -- but he didn't. Instead of saying anything, he just watched Steve make scrambled eggs, and then took his plate and ate them when Steve slid it over.

"I have to go to that thing with the rest of the team today," Steve said. "Is that okay?"

Bucky snorted, getting up to pour himself another mug of coffee. "Why would it not be okay?" he asked. Anyway, it wasn't like Steve had much of a choice, at this point; it was part of the deal that Steve had brokered in exchange for Bucky's relative freedom. Steve really owed them now, and Bucky doubted they'd let him forget it anytime soon.

"I just feel bad leaving you here all the time," said Steve. "And since you aren't really supposed to go out by yourself, it's just -- it must get boring."

Bucky shrugged. "It's not so bad," he said. He had done fine at entertaining himself in the past, and now there were a hell of a lot more options, even if the news made him want to break things sometimes. "And yeah, it's okay, it’s fine."

Steve nodded, pushing the remainder of his eggs around on his plate. "You think they're gonna clear me for missions anytime soon?" Bucky asked him after a second.

Steve glanced up at him with his eyebrows raised, then looked down at his plate again and shrugged, his fork screeching across the surface. Bucky understood why he was surprised; sometimes it surprised Bucky that he wanted to have to do anything ever again that involved holding a weapon of any kind. But when it came down to it, there wasn't a whole lot else he was good for anymore. "I only want to help," said Bucky.

"I know," Steve said. "I just have no idea. They hardly tell me anything anymore. Even Natasha."

"I'm sorry," said Bucky.

"It's okay," Steve said. "I don't regret it."

It was good that Steve remained so steadfast on that point. It was good that Steve didn't regret it. It gave Bucky all the room in the world to regret it on his behalf.

+++

The standoff didn't last much longer. Things escalated, as they always did; the more people who turned up with superpowers and robotic suits of armor fighting for the side of truth and justice (whatever that meant), the more turned up on the opposite side. And the former ended up needing all the serum-enhanced soldiers they could get in their ranks, long and bloody history or not. They had this whole hearing that Bucky struggled not to laugh hysterically throughout, where they discussed his current stability, his culpability for his past actions, his trustworthiness, as if he wasn't even there at all.

He started training with Steve, after that. It wasn't like he'd forgotten -- you didn't forget seventy years of combat training that had been programmed and reprogrammed and wiped and implanted over and over again. You just didn't. But it was better to be in practice than out of it, and Steve was maybe the only person who could really keep up with him, challenge him even, in a combat situation. Or maybe it was just that Steve was the only one who trusted him enough to get in the ring with him alone. Didn't matter.

There was a strange comfort in it that brought back the dream, how unsettling it had been. _This_ Steve, the now Steve, was one Bucky had become weirdly used to. The sound it made when Bucky's fist impacted hard muscle, the meaty thump when he took Steve down, the effort to throw Steve's weight. This Steve was a Steve that was not unbreakable, precisely, but he could take what Bucky gave him, and he seemed to relish it with a sense of grim satisfaction, even on the days when he couldn't land a solid hit on Bucky and ended up bruised from neck to navel.

Steve, for his part, had never known how to pull his punches, and he certainly didn't now. But that was familiar enough, too, even if it hadn't been Steve on the giving end before. It was the sensation: his head snapping back with the force of Steve's uppercut, the bright unreal bloom of pain, the blood that gathered in his nose and mouth and sprayed out across the gym floor. The feeling of falling, of hitting the ground. He instinctively rolled to his left, to let his metal shoulder take most of his weight, and _whoof_ -ed as the air rushed out of him.

"Shit," said Steve, stopping immediately, coming over and getting down on his knees next to Bucky. "Are you okay?"

Bucky felt his jaw, ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth checking for loose teeth. "I'm fine," he said. He was already sitting up, ready to keep going. He took Steve's hand when Steve offered it and let Steve pull him up.

"Sorry," Steve said ruefully, taking Bucky's chin in his hand and examining the side of Bucky's face, which was hot with pain. "I should have pulled my punch."

"No, you shouldn't," Bucky said. "It's all right. You don't have to apologize. This is the whole point of us training together, you know?"

"I suppose," said Steve, wincing. "It's turning purple already."

"It'll be gone in an hour," said Bucky, running a hand through his hair and twisting out of Steve's grip, starting to circle again, hands up and ready. Steve just stood there, though, watching with his hands by his sides, the neck and back of his tank top translucent with sweat. "What? Are you that concerned about my vanity?"

"No," Steve said. "I don't know. I just think I'm done for today. All right?"

"All right," Bucky agreed, dropping his hands immediately, starting to unwrap them instead. They put everything back in its place and then Steve stood there, in the center of the room, looking around. The sun had started to go down, and it was getting dim. Bucky couldn't imagine what Steve was thinking. "Can I ask you something?" he said eventually.

"Of course you can," said Steve.

"Did it hurt?" Bucky asked. "When they gave you the serum." Steve turned to look at him, and Bucky said, "I don't know, I just thought, growing that much, so suddenly, it must have been --" He shrugged.

"Yeah, it hurt," said Steve. "I think it hurt more than anything else I can remember. But that's the weird thing -- I don't really remember it. I think it was so intense that I blocked most of it out. So now I can say it hurt, but I can't remember what the hurting felt like. I can't even find the words to describe it, really."

Bucky nodded. "Did it hurt for you?" Steve asked.

"Probably," said Bucky. "I mean -- I'm sure it did, I just don't remember. I remember a lot of things hurting, I just don't remember that in particular." And he did; there were plenty of sensations, like being punched, or burned, or shocked, that he could remember, and often in specific context, but that wasn't one of them. Even when they'd installed the arm, he remembered these moments, and the sense of total, horrified helplessness, as they'd exposed his shoulder and debrided it all the way down to the bone. He could even remember the high whine of the bone saw, but he couldn't remember the pain itself. Maybe, like Steve said, the brain disremembered the worst of it.

"Why?" Steve asked.

"What?" said Bucky.

"Why'd you ask now?" Steve said.

Bucky shook his head. "Just thinking," he said.

Steve smiled. "Since when did you become the thoughtful one?" he asked.

Bucky glanced at him, shouldering past, toward the elevators. His face still hurt, though it had dulled to an insistent ache. "I always was," he said. Maybe not in the relentless, obsessive way that Steve had of dwelling on things until he could solve them in one way or another, but --

Steve sighed. "You're right," he said. "That wasn't funny. It was a bad joke."

+++

The light filtered into the room in a sort of syrupy, pale yellow glow; it was morning, and Bucky's skin was cold everywhere it was exposed. He shifted, stroking his hand over the back of Steve's head where it was pillowed against his chest. Steve's arms were wrapped around him, his bony shoulders digging into Bucky's ribs, his fingers clutching at Bucky's back, which was funny; Steve was asleep. He should have been relaxed.

Bucky looked at him. It wasn't like he'd never looked at Steve before. He had a lot of practice looking at Steve in all of his iterations. But there was something profoundly different about it now; he'd never put it all together this way. He looked at Steve's dark eyelashes, like somebody had drawn them on with a soft stick of charcoal, and the sharp angles of Steve's profile picked out by the sunlight. The translucent pallor of his skin, the darker hollows between his ribs.

It would have been dumb to think of it as Steve being beautiful; _beautiful_ was for something else entirely. But there were certainly moments, and parts, that Bucky couldn't really find in him to describe any other way. Steve's hair was so soft against his hand, even though it was his left and he couldn't really feel it properly. He just knew it was. Like duck down, or rabbit fur.

Steve's eyes opened. He _smiled_ at Bucky, like he was seeing the best thing in the world. He leaned in and up, and pressed his mouth to Bucky's. _Oh,_ thought Bucky, realizing in that moment that he was dreaming. _Okay._

After a moment, Steve's mouth opened and his tongue pressed against Bucky's lower lip. It had been a long time since Bucky had kissed anyone properly, but like combat, he hadn't forgotten this either. He let Steve in, and all of his thoughts went away for thirty or forty hot, slow seconds, and the first real thought that came back to him was, _Did I teach Steve to kiss?_ because Steve kissed just like him.

He wanted to get closer to Steve; he liked the feeling of Steve's heart beating faster and faster where he was pressed against Bucky's chest, but he wasn't stupid enough to roll on top of Steve. He probably weighed twice as much as Steve right now, and Steve needed to breathe.

Instead, he shifted so that Steve was lying on top of him, and after a minute, Steve sat back on his haunches, straddling Bucky's thighs. He was hard to look at, with his back to the sun. It turned him white at the edges, and anyway, Bucky realized, he didn't really have any context for what this should look like; it was all blurry, soft-focus. He couldn't pick any one thing to look at. It was just an impression.

"What now?" said Steve, slightly breathless.

"I don't know," said Bucky. _I guess this is where I wake up,_ he thought.

He woke up.

+++

"Do you mind if we take the train?" Bucky asked, tucking the tails of his scarf into his jacket.

Steve glanced at him slightly askance. He had his phone out, about to call a cab, or one of the black unmarked cars that seemed to mysteriously be right around the corner whenever he needed to go anywhere. Bucky didn't want to sit in the back of one of those cars; it was always so quiet, back there with Steve. The drivers never said anything to either of them.

He was pretty sure that Steve had a car or a motorcycle, but maybe that was just another part of Steve being allowed to keep Bucky, that he wasn't allowed to just go out on his own. If it was, it was stupid. It wasn't something Bucky could ever imagine Steve willingly agreeing to, and knowing that it had happened on his behalf made him itch somewhere inside he couldn't hope to reach.

"Sure," said Steve. He got on the phone anyway and said, "Yeah, I think we're just going to take the subway instead. Okay?" and as soon as they were halfway down the block, Bucky saw all of the undercover agents moving gradually along with them. He didn't know who they were meant to protect: him and Steve, or everyone else.

It was loud in the train station. It felt nice, to be surrounded by something other than silence. Bucky closed his eyes and listened and felt Steve standing beside him. When the train pulled up, he opened them again, and saw the agents out of his periphery, waiting for them to make a move.

Steve glanced curiously in the direction Bucky was looking. As he did, the man Bucky was looking toward caught his eye and turned away, chattering on his cell phone. A horrible realization dawned on Steve's face, and Bucky said, "Come on, the doors are going to close," and pulled Steve with himself by the shoulder of Steve's jacket.

"I'm not upset," Steve said, locking his knees as the train lurched into motion. "I mean, I shouldn't be. I knew they would be watching us."

"Try and forget about it," said Bucky, and then laughed, because he knew saying that to Steve was useless. But the laugh made Steve's expression clear a little, so it was worth it in the end.

+++

He didn't so much like the art, but he liked the museum. "Was this here before the war?" he asked Steve.

Steve blinked, looking away from a painting that was all swatches of color and noodly lines. "No," he said. "Not in this building. I don't think this was built until -- 1960, maybe."

Bucky nodded. "Do you like that one?" he asked, pointing with one hand at the painting.

"I don't know," Steve said. "But I feel like I know the artist, from looking at it."

Bucky felt like he should have understood what Steve meant by that -- whoever had painted it had certainly been excited about something, with all the splashes and the wide messy brushstrokes -- but instead it was unfathomable to him. Like something had disconnected, like he couldn't relate anymore. He went and looked over the edge of the railing, down at the people walking around below, and then up, at the skylight.

He stood there for a while, and Steve moved on. When he came back, he leaned next to Bucky and looked up, too. He didn't say anything, and eventually Bucky said, "I like this."

"I like it, too," said Steve.

"I don't know about the art," said Bucky. "I just don't -- you know, I don't know what any of it is supposed to mean."

"We can go, if you want," Steve said.

"No," Bucky said. "Let's finish looking around, there's not that much more. You wanted to come."

"Yeah, but if you're not having a good time, we can leave," said Steve. "I can come back anytime."

"It's not that I'm not having a good time," said Bucky. "I'm having a good time." He shook his head and blew out a breath when Steve just gave him a canny look, pushing off the railing and starting back up the sloped floor. "I'm having a good time," he said. "Come on, let's look at the rest of it."

Steve followed him, and they went through the rest of the galleries they hadn't seen yet -- it really was a pretty small museum, especially compared to the labyrinthine grandiosity of the Met -- and then they walked back down to the lobby. Steve went and stood in the center and looked up at the skylight, and Bucky watched him and watched the agents who had come into the museum with them. They had to know they'd been made, by now, but they just kept pretending they were tourists like everyone else.

"You want to go to the Natural History Museum next?" said Steve, coming over.

They walked through the park, even though it was cold. There were still plenty of people out, walking dogs, jogging. Flocks of geese burbling noisily by the water, wobbling over the grass. It was nice. Bucky _was_ having a good time. It was so boring, so normal, a luxury that for a long time he had thought he might never be permitted ever again. Just to walk, wherever he wanted.

They walked through halls and halls of dinosaur bones and preserved taxidermy animals, things Bucky had never seen before and knew he could never really hope to see in any other context. These fantastic, strange pigeons; striped wolves; the sad dodo. Bucky couldn't decide how it made him feel -- the whole experience seemed designed to emphasize what tiny, tiny specks they were on the face of the universe. He just wasn't sure if that thought was comforting, or terrifying.

There was a big sculpture of the moon, and Steve went over and put his hand on it, running his fingertips over the bumps and craters. "Look," he said, grinning. "I'm touching the moon."

He wasn't, obviously, and he knew it. But he seemed happy anyway. Bucky ought to be taking a page from his book.

+++

"What do you think?" Steve said. The canvas was enormous; it was practically twice the height of Steve, and he was standing there in front of it, arms akimbo, paintbrush in one hand, tucked against his hip.

"I can't see it," Bucky said. "You're blocking it, you have to back up."

"Oh," Steve said. "Right." He took a few steps back, tilting his head. The painting was just -- black. It was just black, but it was a darker black than Bucky had ever seen before in his life. It seemed like it was pulling the light in somehow, devouring it.

Bucky didn't say anything, and Steve twisted, the knobs of his spine and his shoulder blades clearly outlined through the fabric of his t-shirt. He was frowning. "Come on, say something," he said to Bucky. "I made it for _you_."

Bucky opened his mouth, but the only words he could think of were _I feel like I know the artist from looking at it,_ and those weren't the right words to say. As he stood there staring, the canvas somehow opened up in the middle, splitting like it had a seam right in the center or something, and a sea of red-black liquid came spilling out. The wave went straight for Steve, and he didn't even seem to notice.

Bucky tried to say his name, but all he could say was, "I feel like I know the artist," and Steve wasn't paying attention. He was tapping the brush against his mouth, looking forward at the painting. The liquid rose, around his ankles, his thighs, his chest. It wasn't cold; it was hot.

Eventually Steve looked back at Bucky again. He just looked sad, now. Disappointed, maybe. The red liquid lapped around his chin. "If you're not having a good time," he said, his voice muffled and distorted as the paint crept into his mouth, "we can leave."

+++

Steve was in the living room, reading the same book he'd been going at for what had to have been at least a month now. He glanced up when Bucky came in, putting his finger in it to mark his place and closing it. Bucky almost hated that, for a moment, that Steve would just interrupt himself so readily. "Hey," said Steve.

"Hey," said Bucky. He stood in the middle of the living room, looking around. "I keep having these dreams."

Steve put the book aside and leaned back, his posture opening up. "Come sit down," he said, and Bucky did, automatically, without even thinking about it. It didn't bother him once he realized what had happened. "What are they about?" Steve asked.

"I don't know," Bucky said, truthfully. "You're small in all of them. Like before the serum."

"Sometimes I think I have those dreams too," Steve said. "I don't know; I don't remember them, but I wake up and I sort of forget, and for a second I'm confused."

Bucky knew what he meant. It had been that way with his arm for a while, when he came out of cryo. It wasn't anymore; it was just part of him now. But he was pretty sure he'd had objectively longer to get used to it than Steve had to get used to his new body. And -- that was just the one part of him that had changed, not the whole thing. "Do you miss it?" he asked.

Steve laughed, ducking his head. His eyelashes shaded his cheeks, and Bucky thought of them in that dream the other night, looking like they'd been drawn on with charcoal. "I _should_ say no," he said. "But it's more complicated than that. I wouldn't change it. I wanted to help people, and I can help better this way. I wouldn't go back and say no."

"But," Bucky prompted.

"But it made me feel lost for a while," Steve said. "You wake up one day and everyone thinks you're someone completely different from who they thought you were the entire rest of your life. Everyone treated me differently. They looked at me differently. Talked to me differently. At least during the war, there were a few people who knew me before. But when I woke up -- nobody had any idea who I was."

"What about Peggy?" Bucky asked. _She_ had known, maybe better than anybody else.

"I guess so, yeah," Steve said. "She might have known _who_ I was, but she didn't know _when_ I was." He looked up again and met Bucky's gaze; his expression was so intent it felt like a physical touch, his eyes very blue. He didn't have to say it -- Bucky knew what he was thinking. There wasn't much other reason for Steve to fight so hard to keep him; Bucky was the only one left who really knew him.

"It's stupid," Steve said after a minute. "I spent so long being so resentful. Nothing worked right, I was sick all the time, I couldn't climb a flight of stairs without having to stop and rest. I remember how my hands and my knees used to ache in the cold weather, and nothing I could do would stop it." He sighed, leaning his head against the back of the couch. "I got everything I wanted."

"I wouldn't change it either," Bucky said. He liked that Steve was harder by magnitudes to kill now. There was a sick comfort in it, even knowing that it also meant that there were more people who would be trying, equally hard, to kill Steve. "But I liked you just as much before, you know that. And I know you. It's not stupid."

Steve tilted his head, and Bucky recognized the look on his face. He'd seen the expression before, though never on Steve. He moved a little closer, and leaned in, and Steve tipped his head forward off the back of the couch and leaned in, too. _How could this make anything worse, really,_ thought Bucky. _What could it hurt._

Steve met him halfway into the kiss. His hand came up immediately and cupped the back of Bucky's head, his fingers winding into Bucky's hair. Something in him deflated, some weird tension that Bucky recognized even if he couldn't put a name to it, and he leaned forward against Bucky, his lips parting. He was sweetly hesitant about it. He didn't kiss like Bucky at all.

+++

Steve had his hands up Bucky's shirt, his fingers running hot over Bucky's skin. He'd maneuvered Bucky into his lap somehow, in bed, and they were both still in their pajamas; Bucky could feel Steve's erection very clearly, the weight and heat of it concrete and real in a way that hadn't been clear at all in that dream.

"Wait, wait," Bucky said, pulling his mouth away from Steve's. He licked his lips, and Steve watched him. Bucky couldn't take his eyes away from Steve's mouth for a moment either: his lips were so red, and he was flushed deeper than Bucky could ever remember seeing him. An even, pink glow, not the blotchiness Bucky remembered from before the war.

"What is it?" said Steve, kissing his jaw, his neck. His mouth was hot as a brand.

"Have we done this before?" Bucky said, breathless, as Steve's hands skated down his sides and pulled up on the hem of his t-shirt. "We didn't, right?" he asked, his voice muffled as he pulled the shirt off. "You'd tell me if we did, right?"

When he got the shirt over his head, Steve's hands had stopped moving and he was staring at Bucky with an unreadable expression. "That's kind of an important thing to be able to remember," said Steve, "don't you think?"

Bucky sat back a little on his heels, running a hand through his tangled hair. "I guess," he said.

Steve stayed very still. His thumbs rested in the divots of Bucky's hipbones. "Come on," Bucky said. "Don't play games with me. Do you want to stop?"

"No," said Steve, apparently shaking it off. One of his fingers traced a line along the waistband of Bucky's sweats, tentative. "I just -- I'm not exactly sure I know what to do from here."

"No?" Bucky said, looking down at him. "Well -- me neither, but I think I can figure it out."

He got his sweats down around his thighs and got his dick out, then reached into Steve's sweats and pulled Steve out, too. Steve's breathing had gone short with nerves or anticipation or both, and there was a pearl of liquid beading up at the head of his cock, pooling against his skin. Bucky reached for the big bottle of lotion beside the bed and pumped some out, and then he wrapped his hand around both of them together.

Steve made a surprised noise and closed his eyes, his brow furrowing. He bit his lip, hard, hard enough that it went white for a moment, and then the color flooded back into it.

 _Is this okay?_ thought Bucky. It must be. Steve opened his eyes and stared up at Bucky, the flush spreading down his face into his neck and chest, and Bucky couldn't look away from him. It was strange, because in a way it was totally familiar, but totally unfamiliar at the same time -- to know exactly what was happening, as Steve's cock got harder and his thighs grew tense, but to see it happening to another person.

Steve didn't make much noise when he came. It was more of a gasp than anything, and a hot spurt of liquid against Bucky's hand. Bucky let go of him and jerked himself off for a few more seconds, still staring down at him, and then he came too. He hadn't in a while, and it was almost too much; there was no way to avoid being overwhelmed by it. It sent a convulsive shudder up his body, a wave, a ripple.

Steve's hand came up and stroked Bucky’s hair, his face. His palm was warm and solid. Bucky closed his eyes. "You okay?" said Steve, soft.

"Yes," said Bucky. He thought about that black painting. Spilling out, filling up the room --

+++

The gun was heavy in his hands. The weight of it felt just how it was supposed to. The safety clicking on and off, how the metal slowly warmed to his touch. Steve was looking at him.

"You don't have to ask me if I'm okay to do this," said Bucky. "You know I am."

"Right," said Steve. Bucky was struck, not for the first time, by how different he looked in uniform. It was no wonder people mostly left them alone when they were out together. Bucky always thought of Steve as being profoundly recognizable, somehow distinct from everyone else, but maybe that was just because he knew him.

There was this strange feeling bubbling up inside him. An odd giddiness. For the longest time, he'd thought that, given the chance, he'd never hold a weapon again, but he must have forgotten how it felt: the certainty of knowing his own competence. Here, if nowhere else.

It wasn't just that, though -- there was an absurdity to this entire thing. Half an hour ago, Bucky had been trying to fall asleep with Steve's hot bulk pressed up against him, wondering if it would ever be easy again to drift off listening to someone else breathe. Now here they were, arming themselves to the teeth, both of them wearing these strange, cartoonish outfits; Bucky's wasn't helped by the fact that it was black. The silhouette was enough.

He wondered if the rest of them would show up too, but when he and Steve got there, it seemed to be just the two of them and the Black Widow. "Tony's out on this one," she said. "Glitch in the armor interface. I called in Clint for recon; he should be in position in five."

"What are we dealing with here?" Steve said. They were in some nondescript office building that could have been meant for anything -- just rows of cubicles and computers.

"Reports of a girl who could appear and disappear at will," said the Widow, who was observing Bucky steadily even while seeming not to look at him. "I know, I know, but we got some surveillance footage from traffic cams, and it's legit. Heat signatures from the infrared cams confirm. One minute she's there, the next she's not."

She showed them, on a small tablet; a young woman dancing through traffic in an impossibly agile pattern, vanishing the moment that a car almost came in contact with her. The scene was chaos; even without sound, Bucky could imagine the tires screeching and horns honking. "Asgardian?" said Steve, squinting.

The woman did seem to have something otherworldly about her, aside from the obvious -- her clothes didn't look like something a normal person would wear, not that that said a lot. And her hair was very long, caught up in a tangle of elaborate braids. "Maybe," said Romanoff. "My money's on _not entirely human._ "

"She'll fit right in, then," said Bucky. Both Steve and Romanoff looked at him. "Why'd they call us in?"

"Because she's actually caused about three dozen injuries and ten fatalities so far," said Romanoff. "And nobody can catch her. If anyone has a chance, it's probably someone who's faster and stronger than a normal human. As you saw on the video, her teleportation abilities seem to be limited to short distances."

"Right," said Bucky. "Where is she?"

"Howdy," said Hawkeye, into his earpiece. "I have eyes on. She's in the lobby of the building directly opposite of you. I don't know what the hell she's doing; she's just walking around."

"Let's go," said Steve. For a second, Bucky had this profoundly bizarre idea that Steve was going to just jump out the window -- but he didn't. He headed toward the elevator instead, and Bucky followed. "Natasha, Bucky -- I want the two of you to stay behind me, on my four and eight. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," said Romanoff and Bucky at the same time, in very different inflections. Romanoff gave him an ironic look as she went past him into the elevator, like she thought she knew something. Maybe she did. So what?

+++

The whole area had been cordoned off and was empty in a way that New York never really was. They walked across the silent street in a triangle, and the woman was waiting for them when they stepped into the lobby of the building. This close, she definitely looked less like a bad cosplayer and more unreal: all of her limbs were slightly elongated, and all of the bright blue garments she wore didn't have any sign of seams or construction of any kind.

"Why have you come?" she said. Bucky shouldered his gun.

"Ma'am," Steve said, "I'm not sure where you're from, or who you are, but you've been causing a lot of chaos -- you've hurt a lot of people, and --"

"Yes," said the woman. "What short, sad lives you live. Ignorant, small, far away from everything else. Very nourishing." Her gaze focused on Steve for a moment, and then raked over Romanoff and Bucky, too. "You are different, though, aren't you?"

She smiled. It was one of those smiles that couldn't have looked nice even if she tried; her teeth were too white, and there were too many of them, all of them needle sharp. "You," she said to Steve, "wear your difference with pride. It makes you stand taller." She turned and looked at Bucky, and Bucky left trigger discipline far behind. It felt like being covered in a cold, wet blanket, having her look at him.

"You, on the other hand," she said. Bucky squared his shoulders and got ready to hear what else it was that she had to say. It couldn't be any worse than plenty of things he'd heard before.

"Spare us," Steve interrupted. "Please." Bucky looked forward at him, where he was holding the shield at ready. Steve hated a Mexican standoff as much as anybody Bucky knew, but the fact of the matter was that there was no way to know where this was going to go. She didn't seem particularly friendly, but maybe she could be reasoned with.

As if she could read his mind, she looked over at Bucky again. Her expression did this weird thing where it went unfocused for a moment, and Bucky fired his gun a fraction of a second too late. The bullet flew right through the empty air where she had been. She appeared a scant foot away from him, so close that the barrel of his gun was right in her face.

Sometimes in these instances, time moved slow for Bucky, like he was somewhere outside his own body. Somewhere, he could see Steve and Romanoff moving. He could even hear Steve's voice -- but it was so far away.

The woman pulled a sword out of -- somewhere. He almost laughed: a _sword_ , a big fucking sword. She stabbed Bucky in the stomach; it slid right through his armor, just like butter. He shot her in the face.

For all she'd looked unreal, she fell to the ground just as heavily as any human being Bucky had ever shot, and she bled bright red. The sword sort of _popped_ into a shower of blue-white, insubstantial sparkles, and disappeared. The pain brought him back to reality, and he crumpled to the ground despite himself, going down onto his knees and then his side.

There was a lot of blood. It spilled out of him, thick and hot and sticky. It was real. "God," said Bucky, looking at it, the gouts of it coating his fingers. He laughed, staring at his blood pouring out of his body.

Someone came over and touched him, picked him up. Steve, of course. Bucky pressed his face into Steve's chest and laughed and laughed. "Keep your hand on it," said Steve. "Keep pressure, okay, Bucky?"

"Okay, Bucky," said Bucky. He kept pressure on the wound, but it didn't do a lot of good. He was losing too much blood too fast, and the pain was making him shake harder than the laughter. He couldn't look up at Steve, because he knew what he'd see on Steve's face, and he didn't want to think about that right now. _If you're not having a good time_ , he thought instead, _we can leave._

+++

He woke up in the hospital. It was awful; the lights were too bright, everything was some shade of off-white, and his entire body hurt. Everything was so close, right there with him, barely beneath the surface, not submerged like it had been before. The needle in his arm, the dryness of his mouth, the deep throbbing pain in his stomach.

He closed his eyes. He felt a little like crying, but it wasn't exactly sadness. It was some combination of relief and resignation. He could still be real, even if this was what it took. And it was kind of funny -- he'd been so focused on _Steve_ , all those stupid dreams. He'd been so afraid for so long of Steve getting hurt, and it had ended up that Steve hadn't been the one to get hurt at all.

He didn't cry. He smiled instead, so hard that his face hurt. He heard the sound of the door opening, and the familiar cadence of Steve's footfalls, so he opened his eyes.

"You're awake," said Steve. "Are you -- why are you smiling?"

For a second, Bucky could swear he saw the silhouette of Steve smaller there. The same posture Steve had right now: arms folded, feet set shoulder-width apart. The same stubborn expression. Maybe that was what this all was. A reminder of sorts. How could he be anything other than real, with Steve there? And Steve had always been there -- before and after. He was so used to thinking of all that time without Steve as the most real part of himself, but maybe he had it wrong. Maybe that was backwards.

"Bucky?" said Steve. He seemed a little worried. Bucky realized he was still smiling, and stopped.

"Yeah," he said. "Sorry."

"The doctors said you're going to be okay," said Steve. No surprise there. "They're going to release you probably tomorrow. They wanted to keep you overnight for observation."

"All right," said Bucky.

Steve came over and sat carefully on the edge of the bed. He looked down at Bucky for a minute, silent, lit up by the fluorescent lights and the cold winter sun shining in the window. "You laughed until you passed out from blood loss," he said. "I thought it was just shock at first, but then when I came in here and you were smiling like that --"

He trailed off. "Ask me what you want to ask me," said Bucky.

"Are you okay?" said Steve. "Is something going on that I don't know about?"

Steve had always been like that -- nosy. It never would have sat right with him to know that there were a lot of things going on he didn't know about, so Bucky didn't go down that route. Instead, he reached for Steve's hand and laid his own on top of it. "I'm okay," he said to Steve.

Steve glanced down at their hands for a moment, and then he turned his hand over and twined his fingers with Bucky's. "You'd tell me if you weren't, wouldn't you?" he asked.

Bucky didn't want to lie, but he didn't know, so he didn't really answer the question. "I'm okay," he said. And he did what he'd always done, more or less: He gave Steve the best version of the truth. God knew if anyone deserved that, it was Steve.

He said, "I feel better than I have in a long time."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm sorry that this is neither the sequel to Apophasis I hinted about nor the Star Wars AU I said I was writing; nonetheless, it is something. Come say hi on [tumblr](http://dorkbait.tumblr.com/) if you're so inclined.


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